1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to integrated circuits and, more specifically, to distributed power delivery to a processing unit on a printed circuit board.
2. Description of the Related Art
A processing unit and other circuitry on a printed circuit board consume and dissipate electric power. Examples of such a processing unit include, without limitation, a graphics processing unit (GPU) and a central processing unit (CPU). Other circuitry coupled to the processing unit includes, without limitation, electronic power channels that couple the processing unit to a power supply (e.g., battery) on the printed circuit board. A processing unit can consume electric power, for example, by switching devices (e.g., flip-flops, transistors, etc.) included within the processing unit. Such operations of a processing unit are naturally associated with a non-zero amount of wasted and/or dissipated electric power. For example, electric power demanded by a processing unit causes current to flow from the power supply, through the power channels, and to the processing unit. As the current is flowing through the power channels, the power channels naturally dissipate a non-zero amount of power in the form of heat due to the impedance (e.g., resistance, etc.) of the power channels. Thus, the dissipated heat amounts to wasted and/or dissipated electric power of the printed circuit board.
Different processing units consume and dissipate varying degrees of electric power. Some implementations of processing units use relatively little power. For example, a processing unit in a mobile phone may consume and dissipate just a few hundred milliwatts of electricity. A microcontroller of an embedded system may consume and dissipate a few milliwatts. In comparison, a processing unit in a general purpose personal computer, such as a desktop or a laptop, may consume and dissipate significantly more power because of the higher complexity and speed of a personal computer. Such a microelectronic processing unit may consume and dissipate power in the order of a few watts to hundreds of watts. Historically, early processing units implemented with vacuum tubes consumed power on the order of many kilowatts.
Regardless of the type of processing unit, designing a processing unit that performs processing tasks efficiently without overheating remains a primary design objective. In addition, physical designs of printed circuit boards oftentimes include a processing unit coupled to a single power supply on one side of the processing unit, even in cases where the single power supply delivers multiple phases of power. Unfortunately, in such designs (e.g., single power supply on one side of a processing unit), electric power is oftentimes unnecessarily dissipated.
As the foregoing illustrates, what is needed in the art is a more efficient approach for distributing power to electronic devices on a printed circuit board.